First off, this excerpt from
Peggy Noonan's latest essay in The
Wall Street Journal "From a friend watching the Olympics: 'How
about that Michael Phelps? But let's remember, HE didn't win all those
medals, SOMEONE ELSE did. After all, he and I swam in public pools
built by state employees using tax dollars. He got training from the
USOC, and ate food grown by the Department of Agriculture. He should
play fair and share his medals with people like ME!'..." [Emphasis
added]

Democrats drafting their party's
platform have UNANIMOUSLY APPROVED INCLUDING AN ENDORSEMENT OF SAME-SEX
MARRIAGE, Democratic aides and gay activists say, putting the
policy stance on track to be part of
a major-party platform for the first time.

The party is hefting such a move
could energize the base WITHOUT turning off independents. But
it could complicate the message of swing-state Democratic candidates
and those vying for the votes of African Americans, who oppose gay
marriage in greater percentages than much of the population.

The question of whether to include the measure has been intensely
debated. But the recent backing of
same-sex marriage by President Obama CLEARED THE PATH for the decision.

The platform isn't yet final, but the unanimous
approval Sunday by a 15-member drafting committee makes the plank's
inclusion likely. The vote
wasn't publicly announced by the party.

The full platform committee
meets August 10-12 in Detroit, where it will consider the draft
platform. The document will then be forwarded for approval by delegates
to the party's national convention, to be held in September in
Charlotte, N.C....

In addition to endorsing
same-sex marriage, Democratic aides said, the party platform is expected to call for
the REPEAL OF THE FEDERAL DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT, WHICH DEFINES
MARRIAGE AS BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN, and to endorse the Employment
Non- Discrimination Act, which PROHIBITS discrimination in hiring on
the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Republican strategists predicted the Democratic platform would make
life uncomfortable for Democratic candidates in conservative states....

In February 2011, the [U.S.] Justice Department announced IT WOULD NO LONGER DEFEND THE DEFENSE OF
MARRIAGE ACT AGAINST LEGAL CHALLENGES [though it is legally obliged to
offer such defense]. In May, Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama publicly backed
same-sex marriage, marking the first time a president has taken
such a position.

The issue erupted again in recent weeks when Dan Cathy, president and
chief executive of Chick-fil-A, the restaurant chain, said he opposed gay marriage. That has
provoked demonstrations from opponents and supporters of Mr. Cathy's
position.

Marc Solomon, national campaign director of Freedom to Marry, called
the vote of the Democratic platform "a momentous step, because it puts
one of our two national political parties on record supporting freedom
to marry."

Critics of same-sex marriage called the move a major misstep. They say
that the country's social, religious, and cultural foundations define
marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

"That's terrible news," said Tim
Wildmon, president of the American Family Association. "I am a
little surprised they would put it in the platform, because there are a
lot of Democrats who don't agree with that, especially in the black
community."

He added, "I don't see how a
socially conservative Democrat can stay with the party now."

Gay marriage is now legal in New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
Vermont, Connecticut, Iowa and the District of Columbia. Voters in
Maryland, Washington, and Maine will vote on measures seeking to make
it legal in those states in November. Opponents point out that voters
in 32 states have voted against gay-marriage rights. [Emphasis added].

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Pope Benedict, Christ's wise and saintly Vicar on earth, has repeatedly
shown himself to be, for all of his serenity, not in the least afraid
of a battle when it comes to defending the truth. The truth that more
than any other stands "under the gun" today is the truth that homosexual behavior
constitutes a grave disorder in what pertains to the sources of sacred
human life and is therefore a disorder that is seriously sinful,
emptying the soul of that supernatural light and life that we call
sanctifying grace, without which no one can enter Christ's Eternal
Kingdom.

To assert this truth in today's
society is to evoke demonic rage. Pope Benedict is willing to evoke it.
And he has called upon America's bishops to assert this eternal truth
in concert with the Universal Church, come hell or high water!

Into this fray, into the very vipers' den of immorality that San
Francisco, the "Sodom on the Bay", has become, Pope Benedict has sent a
new archbishop, Salvatore Cordileone. (Well named, he, Cordileone being Italian for "Lion-heart"!).
May I share with you here a LifeSite
News report on San Francisco's new archbishop.

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New San Francisco Archbishop
Required Catholic Homosexual Group to Sign Oath of Fidelity LifeSiteNews, July 31,
2012
Patrick B. Craine

SAN FRANCISCO, California, July 31, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com)
- In what one Catholic pundit
described as the Pope's "bombshell by the Bay," Benedict XVI has
appointed stalwart pro-life and pro-family Bishop Salvatore Cordileone
of Oakland to lead the challenging see of San Francisco.

The archbishop-elect, who led
the charge for Proposition 8 [defining marriage as between one man and
one woman] and now heads the U.S. bishops' nation-wide battle
against same-sex "marriage," will take over an archdiocese long-
considered a bastion of dissent, particularly on the issue of
homosexuality.

The archdiocese is home to Most Holy Redeemer Parish, renowned for its
homosexual activism; the Rainbow Sash Movement, a group dedicated to
protesting Catholic teaching on homosexuality; the "Sisters of
Perpetual Indulgence," a group of homosexual men who dress in drag [in
nuns' habits] to protest Catholic teaching; and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi one
of America's most infamous and strident pro-abortion Catholic
politicians. Michael Harank, self-described as a "lifelong Catholic,"
told the San Francisco Chronicle
that the city is "one of the hearts of the gay liberation story" and
called Cordileone's appointment a "SLA-P IN THE FACE to the gay
community" because of his work as "one of the financial fathers
and creators of Proposition 8."

Besides his work on the same-sex "marriage" front, Cordileone, 56, has
taken the more difficult step of working to rein in the national
Catholic Association for Lesbian and Gay Ministry, which is based in
the Oakland diocese.

After over a year of talks with the group, in April Cordileone warned
its board that he would take "public action" to clarify its status "with regard to authentic Catholic ministry" if board members refused to sign an "oath
of personal integrity" that they would "strive to clearly present
Catholic doctrine on homosexuality in its fullness."

The board had refused to sign
the oath twice before, claiming it raises issues of conscience.

During his tenure as bishop,
Cordileone has also been a stalwart defender of the right to life, as
well as an advocate for traditional liturgy including greater use of
the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.

In his opening homily at his
installation in Oakland on May 5, 2009, he lamented that the United
States has become "a land that shows itself all too often unwelcoming
toward the most defenseless of our brothers and sisters who are not
even given a chance to be born, and so are eliminated from society even
BEFORE they see the light of day."

Even before his installation, in April 2009, Bishop Cordileone visited
Oakland pro-life pastor Reverend Walter Hoye in prison, because,
according to a spokesman, "he respects Hoye's affirmation of the value
of human life."

Cordileone told reporters Friday he was "frustrated" that his views on
same-sex "marriage" were dominating
the storyline about his appointment. "I wish I didn't have to expend so
much time and energy on something
that should be self-evident," he said.

"But this is the high-profile issue,"
he continued. "It's a foundational
issue. For whatever God's reason, it's the issue He's given us
at this point in history, so I'm not
going to run from it...."
[Emphasis added].

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A veteran battler against the
enemies of Christ's Truth, Chicago's Cardinal Archbishop Francis George
issued a public response to the Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel,
President Obama's former Chief of Staff, after Mayor Emanuel voiced
strong opposition, as did several other Democratic mayors of major
cities, to allowing Chick-fil-A's restaurant chain to open a new
restaurant within the mayor's "domain." The reason cited for such
opposition was the emphatic public
support for defining marriage as between one man and one woman expressed by the restaurant
chain's owner, Dan Cathy. Here is what Cardinal George had to say.

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Archdiocese
of Chicago Catholic Chicago Blog
Sunday, July 29, 2012

Reflections on "Chicago values" By Francis Cardinal George, OMI

Recent comments by those who administer our city seem to assume that the city government can decide for everyone
what are the "values" that must he held by citizens of Chicago.
I was born and raised here, and my understanding of being a Chicagoan
never included submitting my value system to the government for approval. Must those whose personal values do not
conform to those of the government of the day MOVE from the city? Is
the City Council going to set up a "Council Committee on Un-Chicagoan
Activities" and call those of us who are suspect to appear before it?
I would have argued a few days ago that I believe such a move is, if I
can borrow a phrase, "un-Chicagoan."

The value in question is
espousal of "gender-free marriage." Approval of state-sponsored
homosexual unions has very quickly become a litmus test for bigotry;
and espousing the understanding of
marriage that has prevailed among all peoples throughout human history
is now, supposedly, outside the American consensus. Are
Americans so exceptional that we are free to define "marriage" (or
other institutions we did not invent) at will? What are we re-defining?

It might be good to put aside
any religious teaching and any state laws and start from scratch, from
nature itself, when talking about marriage. Marriage existed
before Christ called together his first disciples two thousand years
ago and well before the United States of America was formed two hundred
and thirty six years ago. Neither Church nor state invented marriage,
and neither can change its nature.

Marriage exists because human nature comes in two complementary sexes:
male and female. The sexual union of
a man and woman is called the marital act because the two become
physically ONE in a way that is impossible between two men or two women.
Whatever a homosexual union might be or represent, it is not physically
marital. Gender is inextricably bound up with physical sexual identity;
and "gender-free marriage" is a contradiction in terms, like a square
circle.

Both Church and state do,
however, have an interest in REGULATING marriage. It is not that religious marriage is private and civil marriage public; rather, marriage is a
public institution in both
Church and state. The state regulates marriage to assure stability in
society and for the proper protection and raising of the next
generation of citizens. The state has a vested interest in knowing who
is married and who is not and in
fostering good marriages and strong families for the sake of society.

The Church, because Jesus raised the marital union to the level of
symbolizing His own union with His Body the Church, has an interest in
determining which marital
unions are sacramental and
which are not. The Church sees
married life as a path to sanctity and as the means for raising
children in the faith, as citizens of the universal kingdom of God.
These are all legitimate interests of both Church and state, but they
assume and do not create the
nature of marriage.

People who are not Christian or religious at all take for granted that
marriage is the union of a man and a woman for the sake of family and,
of its nature, for life. The laws of civilizations much older than ours
assume this understanding of marriage. This is also what religious
leaders of almost all faiths have taught throughout the ages. Jesus
affirmed this understanding of marriage when he spoke of "two becoming
one flesh" (Mt. 19: 4-6). Was Jesus a
bigot? Could Jesus be accepted as a Chicagoan? Would Jesus be
more "enlightened" if he had the privilege of living in our society?
One is welcome to believe that, of course; but it should not become the official state
religion, at least not in a land that still fancies itself free.
Surely there must be a way to properly respect people who are gay or
lesbian without using civil
law to undermine the nature of
marriage.

Surely we can find a way NOT to
play off newly invented individual rights to "marriage" against
constitutionally protected freedom of religious belief and religious
practice. The State's attempting to redefine marriage has become a
defining moment not for marriage, which is what it is, but for our increasingly fragile "civil union"
as citizens.